1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of speech reproduction, and more particularly to a method and system for matching the speed of speech output to a speech input in a speech application.
2. Description of the Related Art
In current speech application systems, there is no way to dynamically adjust the rate of speech output to match a user's speech input rate. In a very-high quality speech system, it would be desirable to dynamically match the rate of speech output to a user's speech input rate to make the system more comfortable and pleasant for the user. There are existing methods for adjusting speech output rates for both artificial and recorded speech, but none of these methods include the ability to match and dynamically adjust to a speech input rate.
An example of such static adjustment is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,553 entitled “Apparatus and method for controlling rate of playback of audio data” which discusses a method and apparatus that controls the rate of playback of audio data corresponding to a stream of speech. Using speech recognition, the rate of speech of the audio data is determined. The determined rate of speech is compared to a target rate. Based on the comparison, the playback rate is adjusted, i.e. increased or decreased, to match the target rate. Although this reference adjusts the playback rate, it is for use in the field of closed captioning video and only teaches the use of rates derived from speech recognition of the audio portion of the video to match the audio output rate to a predefined non-dynamic or fixed target rate. It fails to describe a method for dynamically and automatically matching the speed of speech output (including TTS output) to speech input in a speech application.